All Things Equal in Time
by koolkaori
Summary: Time is the great equalizer of all things, whether large or insignificant. Somewhere in between the Beginning and the Big Equal, something extraordinary happens: Life. Rated for language and suggestive content. Enjoy.
1. Mamma's Boy

From: The Management:

Re: Notes. All writer's notes will now be found at the end of all chapters for this fic. Beginning. . .Now.

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All Things Equal in Time

Chapter 1: Mamma's Boy

The earth spoke to the boy. He would touch it and he would know its will. He knew its pulse, how it breathed, and the low murmurs of its voice that had become indecipherable to most men in its primordial rumblings. It would tell him its secret shapes as he molded it in his hands. It came alive there. He never felt quite right until he could see traces of it wedged beneath his fingernails and in the dry creases covering his palms from years of shaping. His hands were beginning to resemble the earth they touched.

Lina told him that magic worked the same way: magic was nothing more than shaping, and the words of the spell were nothing more than man's bumbling way to decode the language of power. Understanding what the words really meant made the difference between a great sorcerer and a hedge-wizard. He was a natural, Lina said.

Valgaav couldn't say if this were true of not, and didn't think much of it. He knew he was happiest in his pottery shed, basking in the warm aura of the kilns his uncle Jillas built for him, surrounded by boxes of clay his other uncle, Gravos, sometimes quarried. He liked the simplicity of this life, ignoring whatever complexities the woman (who made him call her "Aunt Lina") cryptically spoke of between exuberant ravings.

He had been one of those children obliged to call many non-related adults "aunt" or "uncle". He had not actually met many of these people. He'd been told some of their stories in Fillia's tearoom, after she spent her long days working in her small shop. The shop sold, of all impossible combinations of things, a variety of fine antique vases and an assortment of heavy clubs, bludgeons, and maces--Valgaav wasn't sure what market niche this sort of shop catered to, but his "elder-sister" managed to eke out a comfortable living while amassing only a moderate debt from this improbable venture. His vulpine uncle Jillas told him that Fillia had once been a priestess of the Fire Dragon King, but he never explained what it was that had caused her to lose faith. Valgaav suspected that it had something to do with him, but if either of his two uncles knew, they weren't telling, and neither was Fillia.

Of the people Fillia spoke of, he knew two--the sorceress, who's attempts to teach him magic resulted in loud explosions, and her companion uncle Gourry, who was more patient when they'd spar during Lina's impressive tirades (his uncle Gourry had a habit of saying the wrong things when his aunt was trying to be serious). Valgaav had another uncle he also (sort of) knew, with laughing eyes and a dangerous smile, known only as "That Man", because that was what Fillia called him before sending Valgaav away whenever That Man mysteriously appeared. Those few visits were how he learned his first word as a child: "no".

His not-quite-aunts and not-quite-uncles had all been friends, and in a past life Valgaav, too, knew them all: as enemies. He did not remember any of this, except for the nights he would lose time and dream of flying, which was better than when he dreamed in a red haze of violence, rage, and death. These visions were unsettling, although he forgot most of them in his waking life. This is how he came to meet his "aunt" and "uncle", Lina and Gourry because of one time he couldn't remember during his early adolescence. No one talked about it--he could only assume it was pretty intense, whatever it was, because he doubted the sorceress made regular, free house calls for a mere case of spoon-bending or middle-of-the-night floating furniture.

They were happening more frequently now--the dreams, but he didn't tell Fillia because she would worry. Fillia would not let him call her "mother", but loved him with the possessive, visceral love a mother has for a son. The re-born Valgaav had been Fillia's joy and purpose since hatching. She would not let him call her "mother" out of guilt. That guilt prevented her from telling him too much. Made the words "elder sister" bitter-sweet, like a cut in her mouth that hurt just a little bit, but enough to ruin the pleasure of a favorite meal: a sore spot that would heal if only she left it alone. More than anything, she feared losing the quiet, loving boy she'd raised; losing the little family she fought for and clawed from the bitter ironies of life. She told him what little she dared, which was less than she ought to have, but more than enough to feel bad about. Valgaav did know he had been reborn and that he was an ancient dragon, last of his kind. Had known since childhood. Lina had insisted that Fillia tell him this much, and Amelia had sent her a book which said the same, "Parental Coherence: The Important Role Consistency Plays in Healthy Child Development ", which she swore by (Amelia was expecting her own child at the time, but whether or not the book actually helped, Amelia never did mention it again, which was just as well; Fillia felt slightly envious that she did not give birth to her ward, and would not have the same connection to her child as Amelia did, regardless if Fillia knew that such distinctions really didn't matter).

He had a frightening capacity. Lina (who believed that the word "talent", much like the label "gifted", was a word only used to describe people who had it by people who had none) told her as often as she could, as if to chastise Fillia for never teaching the boy any of the magic he was born to use. This was, in part, due to the fact that Lina found it inconceivable that anyone with a potential for power such as he would be contented to spend his time cultivating a ridiculous interest in pottery. But Valgaav paid little attention to the basic spells Lina tried to teach him, or in really knowing what any of the stuff she said was about. Didn't talk about it much, either, at least not to Fillia, so if he was at all curious she had no way of knowing and, as it was, never felt comfortable enough to pry. She would later admit to herself that fifty percent of her reserve was selfish. On occasion, she would tell him the lore of her kind and his. She'd skim over the nasty bits. She'd never seen him transform since he hatched and was too bashful to show him how.

She worried about the boy. Every so often she'd catch him staring at nothing, the glass orbs of a childhood toy absently clacking in his hand. When he finally noticed her watching, she thought she saw his eyes change, a spark and kindling of recognition, before they would change back to the eyes of a boy who didn't want to cause any trouble and really didn't want anyone to fuss, especially her. She knew about the night terrors, suspecting but never knowing what they were about. Each night from the time she sat up in his room pressing a cool cloth to his forehead while he convulsed and screamed until now, listening to him bolt awake in the next room because he was far too old for them to share a bed, she felt the weight of her culpability burning in her chest, as if she was the accomplice most responsible for the great sin of his pain.

There was once a time when she thought she had to tell him everything. But it had been so long and he'd grown accustomed to her evasions and half-truths that she didn't know where to begin, even if he asked. Later always seemed like the better time to talk about it, and he was the kind of boy that never seemed to be upset about anything. He was the kind of boy that people called "boy", even though it had been twenty or so years since he'd hatched (and the kind of boy who let Fillia cut his hair because it mattered to her even if it didn't to him); and it worried her that she didn't know, but his time had stopped making it impossible to determine his actual age from his physical age. It was a thing that only happened when dragons came into their own power, and, as far as she could tell, he had not. Then again, hers was a different race and there must have been differences between her kind and his.

He was a good boy, although "good" was almost, but not quite the correct word. He was not necessarily good because he desired to be good, or because it was the right thing to do. It was just easier.

There was something stifling and oppressive about Fillia's maternal care; a terrible sadness dwelled in the shop and the apartments just above. He could never really clear himself of it until he crossed the cobbled-stone courtyard to his studio, redolent as it was with an earthy decrepitude that was comforting and solid. Being "good" alleviated Fillia's guilt. It was a passive-aggressive guilt; one rarely found in the secular world. A guilt which she unconsciously transferred to her ward--who felt compelled to be grateful for something he didn't remember because of something else he couldn't remember, but he had to be sorry about. Worse, still, was the intolerable, obliging sympathy he felt was always directed at him--a despicable kind of pity, but one for which he could not blame those that felt it towards him.

Everyone was so good to him, especially Fillia, whose constant kindnesses to him came with a watery-eyed expression of self-reproach. She needed constant reassurance that whatever it was she did for Valgaav (always a bit too excessive to be entirely appropriate) was acceptable to him, until the air became static with expectation. But no matter how many times he tried to tell her, yes, everything is fine (and it was), it never seemed like enough. When he got a little older, maybe nine or ten, he'd ask her what was wrong. She'd sniff and smile beatifically at him, as if the sun and the moon rose and set only for him, saying "no, little wing, everything is wonderful." He was a child, but he could tell when adults were lying. He'd say nothing, and for as long as he could remember his boyhood could be defined by his efforts to please her, and Fillia never asked him for anything because her little boy always seemed so good.

His transition from childhood into young man-hood saw a change from a naïf unease into full-blown gestalt. Like all youths of a certain age, he'd come to believe that if he didn't know Everything, he knew Enough. He wasn't so worldly or inclined to believe that he possessed a righteous moral compass (he held a guileless belief that his upbringing produced an outlook on life that was much too secularized for any such claims), but, having had what he considered a lifetime of practice, he came to understand that being good could be substituted by pleasing women, and that knowing this, he could act out without upsetting the delicate balance of what he reasoned was an otherwise a decent life. He tried not to, but couldn't help finding perverse pleasure in the irony of this.

It was true that he felt strange whenever he talked to his elder sister-who-wasn't-really-his-sister-sort-of-mother-sort-of-not, but this hadn't festered into a bitter misogyny. On the contrary, he loved women, he was happy to please them (it made things easier and, having pleased them, he could bask in the warm glow of approval, the cloying adorableness of their surprise that he would want to please them). He found them--women, girls, all types, ages, and varieties--endlessly fascinating. He'd smile and thank them as he conducted his business about town, but never really spoke until they engaged him with _their _conversation, which he spent mostly listening, limiting his own talk to a few thoughtful sentences. He'd wordlessly help if they needed to lift or carry something, he ushered elderly ladies across streets. He'd buy small candies or fruit for the really young girls if he saw them stare wistfully at an apple in a vendor's bin or sweets counter. He'd apologize if he inconvenienced them in any way, however slight. He'd pretend to not notice when they spoke about him to their girlfriends as he walked by them on his way to or from home.

He would spend hours watching them in Fillia's shop, enjoying the expression that would always light their faces whenever he politely make suggestions, or select a particular jar that seemed like just the sort of jar so-and-so was looking for; how he'd seen them in the store and had this feeling that such-and-such was perfectly suited to the lady and how this vase would reflect their innermost thoughts and the truth of their inner-most selves, and how the delicacy of the glazing of this particular jar brought out the flecks of green in their eyes.

He spoke in low, pleasant tones so that they would have to stand close but not too close, and they'd avert their eyes bashfully because he really made eye contact and really listened instead of pretending to be interested. If they were with their mothers, he'd talk of their resemblance and what a fine upbringing they must have given their daughters to have such aesthetic taste and inherent charm. He was careful not to flatter--instead he would pick out their quirks, some perceived flaw and convince them that true perfection is found in imperfection, illustrating his aside by pointing out the irregularities in antique vessels, cracks in the glaze, a slight asymmetry in design, and so forth, as he escorted them about the shop, thrilling his audience with a scrap of antique obscurity, or the casual aesthetic musing.

He had affinity for such things, he would say, because, he was something of an artist himself, you see, but it was nothing more than a hobby, and no, the ladies were too kind, too quick to praise what they hadn't seen, and yes, if they insisted, he'd be more than happy to show them his studio, if only they promised not to expect too much. Please understand, it was only something he did to pass his time alone when he wasn't helping his elder sister.

And the women loved him for it. They waited breathlessly for him to notice them, and always he did, in his thoughtful and nice way, without the transparent, aggressive overtures of a career womanizer. He was not the "nice guy" because they sensed something deep and personal and brooding about him--something lonely and dangerous and secret that each girl was convinced she could fix, and each of them wasn't entirely wrong, because on some level he desperately wanted and needed them to fix him. He savored the way their faces would bloom--something inside these women would open up, something they kept caged and hidden but only he could see, and now they could see it, too.

The result was many sticky nighttime encounters in his ceramics studio--in spite of, perhaps because of, his many protests that this was not what he'd intended because he valued their company too much for what it was and no matter how beautiful and desirable he found each of them, how unforgivable it would be should there be any awfulness between them. Which was true. He earnestly loved them and believed every he said to them. No matter that the women remained just as lovely and charming as he found them before, he couldn't help feel disillusioned and empty and somehow deceived when it was over and everything was naked and inert and ordinary.

It would all end very quickly and neatly. The women went home adjusting their buttons and disheveled hair feeling loved and beautiful and not a bit regretful because for a single night the quiet boy at the pottery store didn't feel lonely anymore. He'd wait, but they never returned, and it didn't bother him that they didn't. He was very discrete about all of this, but somehow all the girls knew. They loved him all the more for it--it made the whole thing seem even more tragic and lonesome, when, by all rights, he should've been considered a scoundrel. Aside from a primal wholeness he felt shaping clay into objects--an act that was for him, halfway between nature and culture--he felt no purpose in his life, but did not have the vocabulary to articulate this to him self or others.

Fillia saw this, and it broke her heart. At first she was relieved that he liked girls and engaged in social activities outside of his home and pushed aside her own disquieting feelings of jealousy and reactionary judgment that none of these women were good enough. But it had gotten to the point where she feared for her usually grounded, self-contained boy--he'd do something savage and reckless one day without intending to harm anyone and come to harm himself. Should that ever happen--she stopped, and the thought hung in the air, unfinished. She sensed that this, along with his troubling lack of self-efficacy would only worsen with time, and that she was, however she wished otherwise, partly responsible.

This revelation was all it took for her to summon the agency to enter the studio, a thing she had not done for some many years. He looked surprised, but not angry. Finally, she asked: "don't you want to see the rest of the world?" He stopped working to tell her: no, everything was fine, and, didn't she need his help at the store? Besides, the earth would tell him everything he wanted to know of the world. He smiled at her over his shoulder.

"No, I don't," she said, placing her hand on his shoulder, "and it won't--not really." Then Fillia, who, despite the guilty conscience, had been a caring and generous guardian. Who smiled easily, enjoyed her tea in the afternoon, would lose control of her tail whenever she'd lose her temper, was stern when necessary but quick to forgive her ward. Who, utterly and completely, loved her ward. Opened her mouth and emitted a single, resonant, bell-like tone. And as the golden light faded--the first and only time she'd done magic in a long time--Valgaav found himself standing profoundly alone in an alien woodland, with three notes pinned neatly to the front of his shirt as if he were a mere child going to school for the first time.

Next Chapter: The Girl Least Likely To

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Notes:

I apologize in advance for such long end-notes. At least I can try making my notes funny. There is nothing worse than an accusation of humorless-ness.

I started writing this because I finished the last one and couldn't just leave it alone in spite of mixed reviews (90 of all fan-fiction is about making two characters--one of which is possibly a stand-in for

the writer-- f# each other, so suck it up and admit it and get over it--I did, and it's not bad). The story can stand on its own, although it is intended to follow up the "_Untitled_" story. This narrative takes place quite a bit forward in time and I get to work with some new characters (meaning no more bitching about character discrepancies--not that I minded any of it--much), and I can revisit the originals in their later years (which is cool, but lends itself to more bitching--whatever, refer to earlier parenthetical notation).

Obviously, I am drawing most of my source material from the television series, not the manga or the novels--although, some of that material was very useful when writing this. So any discrepancies found in this story (i.e. ages, height, plot, hair color, character relationships, et. al) already existed within the television series. I take sole responsibility for all others. As for spelling--I go by what I see in the U.S.-produced subtitles (I adamantly REFUSE to believe Amelia is spelled "Ameria"--because it looks and sounds stupid even when the soft r is pronounced correctly--and it's pronounced pretty_ normally_ in the subbed version--besides MS Word keeps tryin' to change it, and this ain't _The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2_), with the notable exception of spelling "Sailoon" as "Seyruun"--that's just silly. I'm writing in English, and therefore all spelling and pronunciation follow basic English-language rules for spelling and pronunciation. Hukt on foniks werkt fer me! As of the time of this writing, _Slayers! Revolution_ is just now airing in Japan, and I am loathe to wait the year or so it takes for its state-side distribution to finish this story.

On the subject of ages, for this writing, it helps to guess-timate Amelia's age as being somewhere around mid to late 30-ish, Valgaav's as being early 20-ish (still a child in my opinion), and the next major character, introduced in the nest chapter is about 6 – 7 years younger than Valgaav. One can use this cross- section of subjects to approximate the age of the rest of the cast. This is important because it helps create a context for the story.

I am a grown-up in the process of growing up, so, in my own solipsistic way, I assume every character I write about is going through the same thing in its different way.

You will be tempted to feel very sorry for some of our original characters over the course of the first two or so chapters. Don't. The original characters are all exceptional and complex people--just because I like to examine their flaws and weaknesses doesn't mean I don't admire their decisions--nor do I necessarily agree with them. This isn't a sad story. I _think_ it has a happy ending.

I want to write honestly.

You start with what you know, so I started writing from my experiences as an adopted child, and my experiences as a biracial child. I tried to examine the flawed and brittle ties that connect me to the host of people that exist in the liminal space between my life and my desires. I ask myself: what do these characters need? At what point do those needs intersect (what happens at that intersection?)? Everything goes transparent--what is written is already there. The post-structuralists would argue that writing is not the function of authorship, but rather that authorship predicates writing (it's more correct, then, to use the term "writer" since "author" would imply that meaning and intent are one in the same)--or. . .whatever--which is just a REALLY academic joke that isn't all that funny (I have worse jokes about Hegel), and serves as sort of a disclaimer.

N-E-way. . .right about now the chapters feel like loosely connected vignettes--I think this is a story about relationships (not necessarily romantic). But they will amount to something--there is a plan, which may or may not include sexy bits.

Always, I am the dedicated critique-whore: post long, spiteful, and detailed reviews. Don't just tell me that I fucked up: tell me how, where, when, and why, damn-it, with extended citations and references and such--or tell me how brilliant I am (true genius is determined by whether or not you agree with me), whatever you feel like commenting about. Maybe you're shy--don't worry. You don't have to sound smart (the words "cool" or "sucked" will do in a pinch)--I'm not that smart either. Just post something, and if you like it, tell your friends.

Please. Enjoy.

Sincerely,

The Management.


	2. The Girl Least Likely To

Chapter 2: The Girl Least Likely To

Amelia loved her daughter with the prideful and jealous love a mother has for a daughter. She had resolved to love her daughter from the moment the baby emerged from her ruined womb---something shared between Amelia and the father. A thing made from the tenuous bonds of a fragile relationship (Just what that relationship was had never been officially decided, nor announced to the kingdom. As it was, her unofficial title, dreamt up by some unknown subject and whispered by all, was "Mrs. Gray"---the "Mr." in question came and went as he pleased, whether or not this pleased Amelia did not matter; she knew this was the only way she could keep him, if he could be kept at all, and Amelia convinced herself that this was all a testament of her love for him).

She found it odd that whenever she thought of her feelings for her daughter or the father, she thought in terms of glass.

More often than not, she suspected Zelgadis's irregular presence had to do with her daughter. Amelia knew this would happen. She knew since the moment the midwife put the child in his arms and she saw a look of unreserved love in his eyes she had never seen before.

She wasn't supposed to be born. Not because Amelia didn't want her---if the baby was anything it was a wanted child---but because no one thought it was possible. Or prudent. But she carried the pregnancy to term amidst, or perhaps in spite of, the protests of those to whom Amelia's most personal of roles was of great concern, which was just about everyone who had no business concerning themselves with her private life.

Perhaps she felt that they all should be somewhat placated by the fact that they no longer had to worry about her absences from the palace since she could no longer travel with Zelgadis; it had become impossible when before it had only been nearly impossible. This was okay, really, because Zelgadis was unable to do anything but hover around during her seclusion, vacillating between a tender fascination and frustrated impotence since there wasn't really all that much he could do. She would rather have gone about her palace duties as usual, but her active nature was stymied by the exceptional weight of her inconceivable conception and the adamant insistence of Zelgadis (echoed by everyone else around her) that she should resign herself to nine dull months of convalescence, during which she came to feel that not only did she get an ugly, fat ass, but that she was, in fact, the hugest, ugliest fat-ass in the entire world, even though this was just the hormones that made her feel this way, and despite the fact that Zelgadis was the type of man who thought that the woman he, however unintentionally, impregnated was beautiful and that pregnancy made her breasts even more magnificent (but he was also the sort of man that kept these, as well as most of his other feelings, to himself).

Amelia would have found her situation and his behavior intolerable had it not been for those times when Zelgadis would press his ear against her belly in his efforts to make out the indecipherable heartbeat of the stranger growing inside. To Zelgadis (grandchild of incest, who hated himself out of a belief that his afflicted body was nothing less than proof of his greatest sin, the sin of coming into being and remaining alive) this thing to be born (marked by his three-fold sin: avarice, pride. . .lust) could be his redemption. Its being was a sheet on which he could lay out all of his thoughts and unspoken intensions.

But when Amelia listened, she heard only a small voice from deep within her person. "Mama be strong," said the voice, "Mama be strong for me, be strong for papa. I am becoming."

And Amelia's flesh quaked and screamed each time the new life forming inside of her exerted its nascent will. Amelia, experiencing a weird lucidity as her thoughts turned themselves inward while her body, rather than her mind, began making more and more of her decisions for her in the outside world, knew that this creature becoming (nothing short of a miracle) would do so because of its strong will to be: as strong, if not stronger than the will that wished it into being. Knew that with such willfulness comes a great pain and the responsibility to bear it, for both mother and child, for the world would not be so generous as to allow such a power of will to exist in it un-earned; its place in the world must be justified by sacrifice, lest the world itself become unbalanced by the presence of such a being. Knew this would be nothing compared to what her body would feel when it finally became---nothing compared to the pain of a birth that left her unable to bear any more children (this would not keep her from trying---even though Zelgadis could not look even look her in the face for months, he was so ashamed). And in a little over a year after the birth of her daughter, Amelia knew what had been sacrificed.

It was surprisingly anticlimactic; but why be melodramatic if she knew what would happen and was prepared for the inevitability of it all (even if, throughout all of the time leading to it, she hoped to avoid the ugliness of the thing---that perhaps, just this once, the stupid order of the world would overlook her too-perfect-to-be-permanent-happiness and let her be)? She found a small satisfaction in imagining how the unreadable expression on her face must have looked as she went over the arrangements with Zelgadis---perhaps she had indulged her penchant for theater. Maybe.

Just a little bit.

She did not blame the child.

By the accounts of all the advisors, high-ranking clerics, and various other minions in her service, the child itself was one favored by the gods. Of course they would say so, although she couldn't shake a vague feeling of unease whenever she heard this, knowing and believing, as she did, that such favored people often paid the high price of suffering for those gifts. She only occasionally heard the term "bastard" in association with her child, and never "miscegenation", but those that may have thought such thoughts wouldn't dare utter them---at least not within her earshot. Her father, quickly approaching his dotage, was thrilled to be a grandfather. But Amelia knew this would be so. Her grandfather---king of Seyruun in title only, his infirm, aged decrepitude so advanced at this point---couldn't see what all the fuss was about, but, then again, he couldn't see very much of anything. When asked for his blessing, he couldn't tell Amelia from his long-dead daughter, which was just as well. Had his eyes been less rheumy, his faculties less occluded, he probably would have made the most fuss. This, too, was to be expected. And it didn't really bother Amelia except for the nagging thought that she might one day descend into her own version of congenital madness, so she saw the dying king only because it was customary and probably the Right Thing To Do.

When her daughter was older, she explained everything, but had no vocabulary with which to do so unless it came couched in the romantic fairy-language of a child's bedtime story. _"Once upon a time, there was a princess," she'd begin. She'd tell her daughter that the princess, who was good and abhorred injustice, was in love with a man cursed to hide his face from the world. To live among people, he hid his face behind a mask of heavy stone. But because of the mask, the people were still afraid of him, even though he was a shining knight who valiantly fought for the cause of Justice (Amelia couldn't help but to add that last bit in). But the princess wasn't afraid. One night, while her lover slept, she removed the mask to see his true face, and it wasn't the face of a monster. The princess realized that it was his heart, not his face, locked inside of a stone prison. It was then that the princess vowed to break the curse, and the man would finally know his true face._

_So each night, while he slept, she'd light a candle and trace the outline of his shadow on the wall. The princess knew a bit of magic herself, you see, and she knew that when she finished the spell, he would see what she herself already knew. Knowing the truth, the curse would be lifted, the walls around his heart would crumble, and he would forever be free of the mask._

_It was on the last night when the princess was about to finish the spell and break the curse that she accidentally spilled the tallow. The man, awakened by the hot wax, saw what the princess had done and became angry. "You have ruined us both. Because of this, you will never be able to see me again." And then he left. But the man took pity on the princess, the stone around his heart half gone from the incomplete spell. He left the freed half of his heart with her, and that piece of him grew into a child. And now, the unfinished drawing of a shadow roams the halls of the princess's castle, forever looking for the missing half of its heart. . . ._

Lina thought the story was completely inappropriate for children. She told Amelia that her daughter would be irrevocably warped when she grew up. But Amelia ignored her longtime friend's advice, because she had no children of her own. Lina swore up and down she didn't like children (or rather, other people's children: they were obnoxiously codependent, entitled, anarchic, and couldn't be reasoned with---Lina blamed the parents). She'd vowed to do her part to curb the rising pandemic of uncontrolled population growth by not procreating at all, considering this decision to be the highest order of political activism. This did not stop her from extolling her opinions on the subject of child-rearing as often as she could, insofar as her thoughts on the matter were possibly the most correct (as would be obvious to any reasonably intelligent person). Lina was worried about her friend, who told her that these things happen, probably couldn't be helped, she had no regrets, and, yes, please finish off the chicken, her figure wasn't quite what it used to be after having Zelina---Lina would understand when she had her own children (Lina thought it wasn't bloody likely), etc. etc. So Lina didn't bring it up anymore to either of her friends, as this was the one subject of both Zelgadis and Amelia's lives that was completely impervious to the barrage of Lina's well-intentioned lecturing and friendly abuses.

As a child, the story fascinated Zelina, whether or not she understood that it was about her or not. She often searched the halls of the palace, looking for the shadow with the broken heart. Sometimes she and her mother would make a game of it, pointing to hazy outlines and darkened forms by candlelight, discovering them to be no more than the ordinary kabuki of coats and clutter that haunted suspected wardrobes and unused rooms. There was no wraith-like form wandering along the tapestries and mosaics of the palace halls. Instead, Zelina found only the pale photograms of removed mirrors, spectral and stark against the walls. Amelia told her that her father hated mirrors, and this seemed to be the only evidence that he'd ever existed in a context outside of Zelina's egocentric universe.

Zelina, however, did not fear mirrors. She'd stare at her reflection for hours, consumed in self-absorption. It wasn't vanity. She'd touch her face, taking inventory of each feature: these are my eyes, my ears, this is my nose, these are my cheek bones, this is my mouth---this is what my smile looks like. . . .owning each as she named them. Not entirely hers alone: they also belonged to her father, who, because they shared so much, was perfect in her eyes. She wasn't old enough to recognize anything of Amelia in her face. Perhaps she was too smitten with what she saw of her father looking back. At night, she'd sometimes see her mother sit in front of the large glass oval that hung over her dressing table. Watched as Amelia stared absently into it, applying cold cream, wondering how it was she got to be so old. Of all the beautifully lacquered bottles and inlaid cases of mysterious powders, perfumes, soaps, lotions, and jewelry---Zelina played with them when no one was looking, careful to return each item to its prettily appointed spot on the table---she set aside a special hatred for cold cream.

Amelia's relationship with Zelgadis, however delicate, was common. The means she used to keep the relationship intact was also common (as any woman who'd ever had a baby to unsuccessfully save a relationship could've told her)---though, in Amelia's mind, she insisted that it was not (and would've said as much to those women, if it hadn't been none of their business). She told herself that she wanted his children and told this to herself so often that she believed it, whether or not she really did or just made up her mind to. If she harbored any resentment towards Zelina for the bond she alone shared with her father, Amelia resolved never to let it degenerate into some horrible thing between them. She never knew her own mother. She committed herself to maintaining a relationship that she could not as a child, and the results of those efforts were mixed. Amelia and her daughter had little in common. Zelina was, in almost every way Amelia could see, her father's daughter.

Amelia, like many mothers of a certain socio-economic pedigree, wanted her child to have everything---or as Lina put it, fill Zelina's life with as much well-intentioned but meaningless structure as could be crammed into a seven-day week. She modeled Zelina's education after her own which, if nothing else, served only to prove how different they were from each other. Whereas Amelia had been a dreamy child, Zelina had a more analytical mind. As she got older, underscoring the predictable and petty adolescent rebellions was an almost indiscernible cattiness---in fact it was more like snobbery. Zelina found her mother's interest in wrestling pedestrian and inelegant (although she would grudgingly admit that boxing was a thinking man's sport) and could not, for the life of her, understand how her mother couldn't understand the most basic of mathematical functions or let her take up fencing as a hobby. Nor could she figure out what Lina, of all people, found so exasperating about her magical "experiments" (this was not helped by Gourry, who would remind Lina that she was about the same age when she experimented with all that freaky end-of-the-world-magic and Lina would not-so-good-naturedly punch his arm and tell him it wasn't the same thing, and so on). And though she didn't realize it, Zelina was very different from her father in that she wasn't at all ashamed of her body, covering herself only because she found it pointless and stupid to argue with the many palace officials and dignitaries who would never admit to being put off by her (to her face, anyhow), but didn't quite no how to act in her presence.

Amelia attributed her daughter's dourness to the fact that Zelina physically aged at three-quarters the rate of her actual age, and this was not the usual case of a child possessed of an old soul---it had something to do with the physical makeup of her chimera body, but Zelgadis couldn't really explain this either, since their bodies were significantly different and his body had been changed into its current form well after puberty. Amelia would sigh and say that it wouldn't be a problem for much longer since the women in her family had a tendency to develop early, which Zelgadis found embarrassing, Lina irritating, and Zelina inconsequential---since she had worked out the numbers and written them down several times for her mother (in the bored, slightly exasperated way exceptional children do just to prove to adults how precocious they are), who always managed to misplace each slip of paper neatly covered with precise columns of numbers and arithmetical notations.

Zelina went along with her mother's designs, if only to prove that she could be better. If her mother had been a somewhat clumsy child, Zelina did her best to affect a natural gracefulness. If Amelia professed a black and white distinction between right and wrong, she had a relativistic philosophy of the world. She didn't hate Amelia. She merely thought of her mother as competition for the affections of an absent man. Amelia couldn't blame her: she was also a child raised on a father's love. And neither she, nor Amelia (who grew up without knowing her own mother and outside the influence of her sister, largely expecting her relationship with her daughter to be more like the one that exists between sisters) knew it, but Zelina had not yet reached the age when mothers and daughters stopped seeing each other as such, but as women instead. If she had been of that age, they would have realized that they were allies and not adversaries. But every time Zelina would push just a little too hard and cross one to many boundaries, she would stop dead at even the implied threat of 'I'll tell your father. . .". This was something Zelina would never test: even though she knew he'd never intend it to be interpreted as such, she could never bear the betrayal of her father taking Amelia's side of anything.

After a time, Amelia was at a loss for a way to respond to her child. After all, Zelina wasn't a bad child. There was only a perceived lack of common ground that kept them from being able to relate to one another. Amelia was determined not to be unhappy about it. So she did what she thought best: give Zelina space and allow her to come of age on her own terms. Wasn't that what she did at her daughter's age? Besides, it was politically useful to have diplomatic ties with other kingdoms under the ruse of arranging for places where Seyruun's heir could be fostered at brief intervals.

And thus, Amelia went about the palace as she normally did, overseeing joint parliamentary ethics committee hearings, and co-sponsoring social reform bills, and organizing charity events. Then one day she had an unexpected, but not unwelcome, visitor.

Amelia liked the boy. When Valgaav arrived, a hand-drawn map and a letter of introduction crumpled in his hand, flanked by the guardsmen who found him loitering outside the city gate (a little worse for wear: he seemed confused and a bit dim---it had taken him hours to travel what was slightly more than a brisk, fifteen minute walk, but she couldn't really blame him), she was puzzled, but curious. She read Fillia's letter, which helped explain things, and didn't feel at all miffed that he had been sent to her without warning or even so much as a casual gesture of asking whether or not it would be an inconvenience to send him there. Amelia was used to this sort of treatment from her friends, and she supposed it would be unjust to put one's own feelings before the needs of others (also, as Lina often pointed out, Amelia should know from all her training, that a Prince often finds it expedient to act first, since it is far easier to beg pardon than to ask permission---she politely refrained from reminding Lina that neither she, nor Fillia was a head of State, as opposed to Amelia, who was).

Actually, Amelia was glad Valgaav appeared when he did. She liked taking care of people---she had been groomed for that role over the course of her entire life. She gave him some work in the Library: nothing too demanding, just enough to satisfy Fillia's request that he make himself useful so long as Amelia allowed him to stay in the city in the hopes that seeing a city so different than the small town in which he was raised might pique his interest in what the rest of the world might be like and embark on some grand adventure on his own. Amelia understood what her friend was trying to do, but didn't think it would work. She could tell by the way he acquiesced to her motherly fussing over him (as opposed to Zelina, who, at this point, wouldn't tolerate any sort of maternal intervention, no matter how innocuous) that he wasn't the sort of person who went about looking for trouble. He kept to himself, attended to his work in the Library, and everything fell into routine, as if he'd been a palace fixture for his entire life.

In fact, she observed, trouble often found him rather than the other way around. She doled out more than a few sharp words to the servant girls after he'd been there for about a week. She kept a close eye on him---for his sake, not the girls: only the gods knew how many sordid affairs and aristocratic intrigues had occurred for generations within the palace halls, but she doubted he was prepared to deal with the subtle politics and worldly appetites of bored courtiers and a jaded workforce. Amelia found herself surprisingly glad that her own child showed very little interest in boys (her sexual curiosity was alarmingly frank and of an entirely scientific nature---something any future suitor would no doubt find emasculating and not at all sexy).

Valgaav, who liked Seyruun well enough, even if it seemed to be a bit large, its bustling, cosmopolitan undercurrents too vigorous, and all its shiny white columns and facades more than a bit too shiny and white, didn't really know why he was there. Women, he knew from experience, always seemed to have plans for the unsuspecting men they come across. But for the life of him, he couldn't figure out Amelia (who he liked very much---she was okay as far as princesses go, or so he guessed, having never met any---although he suspected she was a king short of playing with a full deck). When he learned that Amelia had a daughter he thought: "Ah-ha!" But this revelation shed no more light on Amelia's designs for him, and when he asked her about it, a strange expression passed over her features---a mixture of pride, concern, and genuine surprise that she, herself, hadn't brought it up---that Valgaav could only conclude had very little to do with him.

"Zelina? Oh no, I haven't introduced you because she isn't here. It would be nice if the two of you could meet, however, I couldn't say when. She spends a good deal of time out and about---always doing her own thing. To be a teen-ager again. . ." Amelia smiled more to herself than for him.

"What's she like?"

"She is very much her father's daughter," and that was all she said on the subject.

Valgaav didn't really think much more on the matter in spite of his curiosity, having already determined that whatever it was had little to do with him. In fact, most of what went on in the kingdom of Seyruun had very little to do with him. Usually, he preferred it this way, but his tentative steps of his first venture away from home had awakened the first pangs of longing for something more than what he already knew, although he couldn't say just what it was he felt so urgently about. A few weeks passed, and he felt compelled to wander about the palace complex. He did this mostly to stay out of the way---this particular day, of all the days he had spent there, seemed electric with an expectation that affected even him. Everyone around him seemed agitated. He did not know what it what all about and purposely did not seek to find out. He did hear grumblings about some diplomatic tension involving a distant land with a strange name he didn't even attempt to pronounce. He felt a little annoyed that Fillia would send him to a kingdom at a time when they could, for all he knew, be poised to go to war (he knew little of battle in his current life, but knew enough to know that he a) wanted no part of it, and b) was of an age generals thought perfect to draft into their ranks---and living on Amelia's good graces as he did, he was not entirely convinced she would prevent his conscription as both she and perhaps even Fillia, as unlikely as it would seem, might find it good for his moral fiber to do some time in the military).

Arms outstretched, he looked up at the sky ready to entreat the gods in their infinite wisdom to prevent his going to war, when he saw the strangest thing. On the highest spire of the tallest tower he thought he saw. . .a person?

He looked around the courtyard to see if there was anyone else around who could confirm what he'd seen was real or a hallucination, but there was no one, except the strange figure perched at the un-godly height. Since there was no one, he was clear to do what he had no other recourse but to do if he was ever going to figure this strange thing out. He sighed, closed his eyes, and with a thought disappeared from where he stood only to materialize again in mid-air, hovering slightly above the person who was, in fact, an actual person standing on the highest spire of the tallest tower, and not a hallucination. He had little time to decide whether or not this person being real made him feel better or worse, because that person was visibly put off by his sudden appearance and simultaneously trying to regain his or her balance while incanting what sounded like a really nasty spell to throw at him.

He de-materialized, dodging the magical blast and reappearing just in time to see that he had only succeeded in annoying his strange attacker, who was preparing something even nastier to throw at him.

"Wait! I didn't mean to frighten you---I mean, I'm a guest of the Princess---I mean, I just wanted to see if you were real. . ." he stammered, lamely.

"Of course I'm real," his experience told him the voice was female. He waited, but she did not say anything else, nor did whoever it was relax her defensive stance.

"Um. . .perhaps we should continue somewhere more. . .stable?" he glanced over his shoulder and motioned toward a nearby rooftop. She said nothing, but also did nothing. So he took this as a cue and repeated his disappearing trick, reappearing at the spot he'd indicated just before. She regarded him awhile before following, descending with a complicated, technical leap that ended in a well-practiced crouch in front of him. More than a little impressed, he clapped, which seemed to please the stranger as she righted herself and assumed a posture of one accustomed to authority. What little he could see of her face---she wore a hooded mask, even in the stifling summer humidity---vacillated between appearing to be an odd shade of grey and an even odder shade of blue. However, it was very hot, and they were awfully high up, and she was a sorceress of some sort---Valgaav thought it best not to jump to conclusions over what could turn out to be a trick of the afternoon light, some mage spawned illusion, his questionable grasp of perceptible reality, or any combination of the three. . .

"An interesting trick of yours---it reeks of the astral plane, but I haven't come across it in shamanism. Who are you and what sort of magic is this?" He didn't much care for her tone.

"Uh, my name is Valgaav and I'm not a magician. Not really. . ."

"The trick. How did you do it, then?"

"It's just something I've always been able to do."

"Well Valgaav, if you're not really a magician, what do you do? Besides mysteriously teleporting yourself, that is?"

"I make pottery."

"Uh huh," she then produces a small leather-bound notebook and something to write with from somewhere on her person and scribbled what sounded like three terse sentences. Valgaav imagined, not at all incorrectly that she wrote "Valgaav. Not really a magician. Makes pottery." Before returning the book

to whatever mysterious place from which she had gotten it.

"So why were you. . ."

"I'll ask the questions---you answer," she pointed an accusing finger at him, "Who sent you?"

"Nobody sent me. I just wanted to see if you were real. I guess you could've been a statue or something. . ." this only seemed to annoy the stranger even more, "I mean, you couldn't have been because of where you were, I guess. . ."

"I suppose it can't be helped, I mean, when one's experience is of the ceramic sort. Even so, I seem to have that effect on people." There was an edge to her last statement, a strange prideful ness. He thought he heard someone, a child perhaps, giggling."

"What was. . ."

"It was nothing. Understand? You've seen no one," and with that, she leapt off the roof and disappeared into the architecture, leaving Valgaav even more confused than when he first saw her.

When he rematerialized back to the courtyard, he was surprised to find Amelia, who was not so much surprised by his "trick" as she was in finding him there. She was flanked by Lina Inverse and a young girl wearing what appeared to be some elaborate mage robes---although of a nicer quality than he'd seen on any magic user. This, in concert with the expensive looking circlet the girl wore led Valgaav to the conclusion that the girl could be no one else but Amelia's daughter. But when he said as much, Amelia's face turned magenta as it screwed itself into the expression one gets when one is trying very hard not to laugh, as opposed to the girl who demurred, and Lina who broke down in a violent hysterical fit.

"HAHAHA-HA. . .ahhh. . . no," Lina wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. "This is Tatiana, youngest princess of Xoanna---well, second youngest, if you count her twin sister, Marianna, who's now nursing some very painful second-degree astral-burns with their older brother, Zoroaster, in the palace infirmary." The girl smiled shyly. "Martina would name each of her thirteen children after herself, or that ridiculous Zomelgustar. . ." This explanation did nothing to abate Valgaav's increasing confusion, or the terrible nausea beginning to curdle in the pit of his stomach. . .

"Xoanna and Seyruun. . .they aren't at. . .I mean, Tatiana. . .she isn't some sort of political hostage, is she? Please don't make me join the army. . ."

Lina was overcome by another giggling fit while pointing at him. "You? The army? What good would you be for the army? Throw some porcelain pots?"

"What?"

"It's okay, dear," Amelia patted his arm gently, "I'm sure they're perfectly lovely pots. Everyone needs a hobby. I'm quite fond of professional wrestling, myself."

"Ye gods! I almost peed myself. Xoanna and Seyruun aren't at war. Marianna and Zoroaster like to pretend they're some sort of dynamic sword and sorcery duo, and Miss Too Cool for School, Zelina, thinks it's funnier to remind them that they're not. Luckily, they have excellent health insurance---no kidding, full coverage and almost no deductible. High monthly premiums, though. . ."

"Ah. I see. . .Wait---what?"

"And that one there---"

"I came to see the Prince," finished Tatiana, who blushed and then did her best to shrink out of everyone's attention.

"Who, Philionel---I thought he---what?" Amelia turned purple and had to cover her mouth with both hands. Lina's amusement was beginning to segue into mild irritation.

"Pay attention, boy! This isn't all that difficult. See, Seyruun's probably going to war with Quadule Quipezquesh. . ."

"Kwah-dooo what?"

"Quadule Quipezquesh---what's wrong with you? Never mind. Anyway, so Zelina was supposed to go to Xoanna this summer, but she decided to go to that stinky outland sand-trap instead to study advanced mathematic theorems, non-Euclidian geometry or some such idiocy. Now, it seems, she decided to kidnap Crown Prince Hassan al-Fadir Elahi Amir Rache VI, first son of King Four's favorite and third-youngest concubine, as there seems to be some blood feud between the boy and his half-brother Rashid Jesmond-whatever, let's just call him JR for short---and before you ask, this is not who Tatiana came to see, and no, I will not repeat any of those names just because you seem to have a listening problem. In any case, none of this really concerns you. . ."

"Wh-what?"

"Say "what" again. Say 'what' one more time. . .forget it. I am completely exhausted."

"What she means to say, young man," interrupted Amelia, "is that things are a bit tense right now. It would probably be best if you didn't fly around the palace while everyone's looking for my daughter."

"I wasn't flying around, I just. . .I saw someone up there. . ." he looked up.

"Oh my. . ."

Lina slapped her forehead. "Why didn't you say so earlier?"

"What?"

Everyone looked upward, except Amelia who took the time to survey the strangeness of the whole scene before following suit. Above them, perched on the highest spire of the tallest tower was the same figure that had so confounded Valgaav earlier. Amelia shaded her eyes with her hand and wondered just how long she had been up there watching them.

"Well, that's one thing we have in common," she mused aloud, and though she stopped herself from laughing, if anyone had been paying attention, they would've caught the briefest hint of a smile.

Next chapter: The Collector

-----

Notes:

So I was reading over the preamble from the 1st chapter, and realize how ridiculously benighted and noble I want to seem, which is kind of silly considering that I spend an equal amount of time acknowledging and making fun of my sincere love of an endeavor one could consider "dorky" or "vain". I try to have a good sense of humor about it. To worry about appearing vain is a true sign of vanity. This is probably why I write about narcissists.

Oh yes, about the incest line (paragraph six, line three). I did some research and found out that the whole Rezo as both Zelgadis's grandfather and great-grandfather thing was really just a translation error---but I learned this after I wrote that particular part of chapter two, and the only way the mis-translation would work is as described in the line I wrote. I didn't take it out because it _works_ and it makes the Red Priest that much more evil and it _is_ in keeping with my decision to stick to the material in the U.S.-released TV series.

It took me a longer time than I thought to post this and the next chapter. I actually write really fast (for me, writing merely involves smoking a hideous amount of cigarettes, drawing and scribbling illegibly on multiple half-used legal pads, work-shopping the disjointed prose with bored coworkers on company time, and remembering to refill my adderall prescription). The majority of the time spent between posts is consumed by videogames, my 8-year undergraduate college plan, ill-advised relationships with all the f***ing-wrong-people, crippling self-doubt, mild substance abuse, teaching children how to write and draw their own comic books, cultivating an affable aura of misanthropy to maintain a superficial hipster credibility, forgetting to refill my adderall prescription, and a wasting a miserable amount of energy trying to get everyone I meet to like me (everyone wants to be "liked"). Typical writer stuff they never teach you in first-year creative writing. The important stuff.

To read the next part of these notes, you must either be 18 or older, or mature enough to be cool and let it slide because I don't want to get kicked off this site over mere differences of opinions concerning the appropriateness of certain references. It really isn't all that bad---although, some might say I have a very liberal definition of what's considered "that bad". I'll probably edit it out in about a week. Besides, getting kicked off the website would mean you'll never get to know what happens next.

So I got this one review for my last story about two years ago, from anonymous, who thought to tell me that chimera sex is horribly painful/probably impossible, and I have been waiting all this time to tell that person: No. It isn't. I'm not going to launch into some Kevin Smith-esque monologue deconstructing the logistical paradoxes inherent to this sort of material. Instead, I would like to cite the many specimens and varieties of stone and precious metal linga figures from India, pre-columbian Peruvian ceramics, or the jade %$#-rings of central and southeast Asia dating from ancient times to present. I think the Smithsonian has some in its permanent collections. Google it! I also think this person should visit their local adult novelty store (it's like you got to have a post-office and a sex shop to be considered a municipal entity in this country) and check out its stupefying selection of Pyrex and metal gizmos and what-have-yous (the glass pieces can be micro-waved or frozen, and it's absolutely brilliant! . .or so I hear. . .) all with bells, bumps, electrical switches, laser-light shows, whistles, French-ticklers and other such additions, subtractions, multiplications, and divisions, in any color, size, shape and texture imaginable. All water-tight, allergen-free, ribbed for his and her pleasure, and dishwasher safe! Priced to be affordable at any income level. Seriously!

I must apologize to my more sensitive readers. I am not trying to offend you, and I'm pretty sure you have no idea what I am talking about (See second to newest entry of the reviews for my previous story, "Untitled"). See, I was also told by the same anonymous reviewer that I need to re-watch my _Slayers!_ tapes, because I failed to insert any of the anachronistic charm of the series into my stories. I'm not mad about the review, nor am I mad at the reviewer. I'm just a bit more informed about some things, having done some. . .uh. . .research (while conducting your own research, I recommend all interested parties wear sterile gloves and a lab coat, rectal thermometer neatly tucked into the front breast-pocket, with two sexy Asian nurses on hand to take notes---might as well make it all official) and I thought I'd drop some knowledge on the subject in case it comes up again.

The moral of the story is, don't write anonymous reviews---at least, not to me. Stand behind your opinions---I'm obviously not afraid of looking like an asshole, so you shouldn't either. If we can do this, if we could put aside our insecurities and come together, then I don't have to write long and possibly offensive counter-arguments in my chapter notes for all to see---I'll just send them directly! Man, I've waited two and a half years to publish all this. And yes, I feel pretty-effin-amazing having written it. To all Amelia/Zelgadis-shippers: you're welcome.

For serious, if you all aren't laughing right now, I am a failure as a writer.

Oh, and to the same anonymous reviewer: it's O.C.D, not O.C.C, and O.C.D. is where you stamp your feet twelve times before you enter a room, or use Kleenex boxes as slippers, etc.---it's a very extreme disorder with very extreme symptoms and very different from what I wrote about. But yeah, I thought about it, and you're right. I did write Zelgadis a bit too gracious.

Sincerely,

The Management

(P.S.): "VICTORY!"


	3. The Collector

3: The Collector

Zelgadis stayed away from Seyruun, and it was not because he was still looking to "cure" his transformation. It hadn't been about that for a long time. If he could, by some miracle, revert back to his former self, he was afraid he'd be someone else completely, and he was too old to live the life of a stranger. He had spent the better part of his life defining himself by the nature of his tragedy, which didn't seem so terribly important anymore. Now his past existed only as a frame encompassing everything else his life had become.

He'd made his ties to others despite his efforts to avoid them---but wasn't that what he really wanted all along? Would these people who'd become so important in his life still recognize him if he changed? He harbored a perverse fantasy about becoming human again only to be rejected by everyone---as if he were a stranger who killed the original to take his place. In the end, they would rally together and kill the "doppelganger": revenge for the death of their friend. But it all falls apart there, Zelgadis found it difficult to determine which of his selves was the original. He did know that if he did change, his daughter would be alone and he couldn't live with that. No, he'd correct himself; she had always been alone, born neither human nor the other (he could not look at his daughter and still think of their shared form ugly; he could not consider her a mistake nor the result of a mistake), but something else entirely. Mostly, he was afraid that his image of himself as a man would be shattered, everything he knew, or thought he knew, invalidated, and the sum of his life's experience farcically rendered insignificant and hollow.

So he lived in a small estate, spoils of Amelia's position and influence---he never did feel comfortable amidst the palatial milieu---and lived there under the pretense of a habit that no longer existed. And in place of that habit, he collected things:

Obscure engineering tools, entomological specimens, physiognomic indexes of side-show freaks, books about magic, books that critically broke down the history of the world, books of philosophy, books of poetry, books about the various things he collected. . .

He had archival boxes filled with his daughter's drawings: first the naive crayon schemas of home and family, later methodical renderings of imaginary machines. These boxes hadn't been filled for some time. His daughter, it seemed, in her adolescence had taken to wandering the world. She never wrote him anymore. Instead, he'd receive packages of rocks with no letters to explain what they were, what or how she was doing, why she sent them, no less what she'd intended them to mean to him. She frightened him sometimes. Even as her face molded itself into shapes as intimately familiar as his own, she was becoming more of a stranger. She had reached the point of womanhood that made fathers uncomfortable, only knowing them as little girls and ill-equipped to understand them as women.

. . .he raised orchids and roses (he named them after his friends as each plant reflected the version of them that existed in his memory). . .

Other boxes were filled with the letters he wrote but never sent to Zelina and Amelia, both. Stacks of notebooks, some filled with notes and magical equations, some filled with his drawings, the nudes torn out then carefully folded back in. . . .

The house where he now lived was situated in a peaceful wooded landscape, interrupted, at times, by agrarian fields and pasturelands belonging to the small farms and hamlets that populated this area of unofficially incorporated Seyruun. He could have chosen other places to live, places further away from the city (the royal family owned many lands and estates, many of which were empty; the royal bloodlines had thinned from its history of betrayals, exile, death, and the occasional prodigal heir). It had all been arranged. He had his pick of it all, and he chose where he was. It was just as well. His nearest neighbors were at least a league away in any direction.

He would often walk alone through his "lands"---although it made him uncomfortable to think of the house and the surrounding thicket as his, though he liked it there, because he didn't feel as if he earned any such entitlement. It was the same way he felt about the word "consort"; on the one hand, it was the sort of title that carried satisfying connotations of subversion; an ambiguity of character and motivation. But on the other hand it was the sort of qualifier which tends to be accompanied by nasty looks and suspicious murmurs, and Zelgadis was a man who loathed making a spectacle of himself. Heavy thoughts, indeed, to entertain as one wandered about in nature. But here, too, he'd collect things, picking up anything that caught his eye, sometime drawing or taking notes, until these things began to fill their own boxes and form stacks on shelves, next to boxes of stones from unknowable corners of the world.

. . .he watched birds and kept journals about them, sometimes making up stories about their lives. . . .

He hid the things he collected in every room of his house, although it had been a long time and he was beginning to forget why he hid them since he was the only person who saw these rooms. He always kept these rooms open and ready, even as his collections spilled out from their closets and shelves and into the living space. It wasn't a large house, not by aristocratic standards, but it had several rooms. He really only lived in one of them. He did not store any of his collections in this room, save for a small compartment of his writing desk. Here, almost ritualistically placed, he kept the things he had taken from Amelia.

They were small things---things she wouldn't miss, and if she did, he'd lie about them: a broken nib from her desk still stained with pitchy splatters of ink, a pearl earring she thought she had lost, an embroidered handkerchief, a brittle page that had come unbound from a volume of illustrated children's fairy tales, a sad, wilted camellia she had pinned to her collar for some court function years ago, a hairbrush, a white game piece from a Go board. . . .

For each of these, he left a reciprocal token of his in exchange: a button, a guitar pick, a drafting tool, a page of magic runes with his notes scribbled in the margins, a chipped teacup, a miniature watercolor portrait he'd once painted of her. . .

He didn't tell her about these things, either. But he was convinced that she kept them and recognized the grand gesture and profound meaning behind each of these objects.

He did not tell these things to Amelia, but he did tell them to another small object he had carried with him for some time. He never did return Amelia's cuff (and she never asked for it). If he thought about it, he would have realized that by not returning it he was hedging (he also would have asked himself why he wasn't talking to Amelia but to one of her personal effects instead). He never had to commit himself one way or the other, and didn't have to feel bad about it. In his mind this was the only way he could care for Amelia: free from having to explain it to himself or anyone else. During those rare instances when he was completely honest with himself, he would realize that he was not happy having both his freedom and his family as he had them now.

In the end it wasn't his feelings that made their relationship impossible, but the realities of Amelia's very public life and the hegemony involved with it (this began to make incredible sense to him when he first realized that he did, indeed, care for her; perhaps it was the reason why he cared for her---men were defined by their patterns: his seemed to be to want things he could not have, and reject the things that came too easy---but isn't that everyone?). And what did he really want? Well, it wasn't in any of his collections, but it was silently omnipresent and heavy, permeating every room of his; rooms he'd left ready for company that didn't know it was invited.

"You're so selfish," said a small voice in his head. It was a girl's voice. Emphatic and young, just the way he remembered it. Sometimes, to make himself feel better, he'd remember things. Things, like the small scar at the base of Amelia's throat she never bothered to heal properly. He used to catch her touching it unconsciously, even when she hid it behind coils of her dead mother's pearls. He didn't know what it meant or why she'd suddenly smile as her fingers hovered over it. He knew he'd been the one that gave her the scar. He would ponder this, and filing through a history of moments as he attempted to find meaning in the chain of random occurrences that made up his past, the events, whether big or small, grew more numerous and complicated the longer he tried to simplify and decode them, until they formed a beaded rope strung across the irrational expanse of infinity. It seemed, over the long years, he collected memories as well.

Those memories, even the good ones, were suspended in a place far away from him, or rather, he was suspended somewhere between a horizon of remembered things he could perceive, but not touch and the present, chained by an immense gravity of regrettable decisions and unnamable insecurities.

And it was regret that stole its voice and likeness from those memories---its form trespassing over the thick walls of solitude protecting his ego, and had become his only company for quite some time. A capricious mistress, regret; it often chose to appraise him from the highest possible vantage point. But then again, she'd been a girl of lofty ideals and always did prefer heights.

"That's not right. That would just make me an idea you thought up in place of the real me so you don't get hurt," it said. It was a very reasonable argument, one with which he had no desire to argue.

"I thought you had an agenda here. Look at all this clutter---what has it accomplished?" At least this way he could pretend he wasn't talking to himself.

"You had a good thing going for a while. You know that right?"

"Yes," he conceded, because it was and he did, "it was what it was."

"And this?"

"It is what it is," which, however lame it sounded, was also very true.

"There is something. . ." and he imagined this thing he'd conjured looked about the room while saying this, "there is something very sad about all of this. Something beautiful, too."

"I suppose you must be very disappointed in me."

"Yes, perhaps. But I knew from the beginning how foolish it would be to have expectations, so I stopped having any. You are who you are, after all."

"But you did have some."

"Which you also knew. From the beginning. Knowing everything you knew of yourself, and I, knowing everything I know of you, accepted those terms."

"Please don't be cross with me---"

"I thought I just explained---well, never mind all that. I don't have to be angry with you just because you want me to."

"I don't want you to be angry with me."

"Yes. You do---but that would be too easy."

"It wouldn't do to make anything easier for me, would it?"

"You're the one who left."

"You're the one who didn't stop me."

"Would it have made any difference if I did? You already know the answer---you should know better than anyone else. Simple and easy are two very different things."

There was a horrible sameness to this argument. It was the most awful kind of disagreement because neither side really disagreed, they just repeated what the other said using different combinations of words.

"It's hard, isn't it? It's hard not to be hurtful. Not to be hurt. It's hard to find happiness."

"Do you want me to be happy?"

"Yes. And I am not all together unhappy, if that is what you're asking. Is that so hard to believe?"

"It's unexpected."

"Is it really? I mean, don't you want to be? Happy?"

"Happiness is something you have to take with your own hands."

"And did you?"

He closed his eyes. "Sometimes," he thought.

"What are you thinking?"

"You already know what."

"But you're going to tell me anyway." He sighed.

"Raspberries," he began, the image already began to take form in the real as he spoke; the words became the colors and shapes they described instead of abstract emotional aggregates, the scene itself lending a sensory verisimilitude to the chain of other memories inexorably linked to it.

"Yesterday, I saw that the bramble overtaking the north wall is really raspberries. I guess they grow wild around here, even though I'd never noticed before. Maybe it's because I always cut them down before they came into season. They should be ripe, soon. Don't you remember? You always liked them. You used to put one on each fingertip before eating them."

"Yes, I remember. And you always complained about the mess I'd make. You can be very patronizing, you know."

"I suppose it can't be helped. I'm a serious man. I take everything seriously."

"Is that why you're talking to a figment of your imagination?"

"You're cruel."

"I am what you've made me," he could almost see it point an imaginary finger at him.

"There you go, feeling sorry for yourself again. Didn't you say you'd never give up your dreams?" He couldn't remember if he did or didn't. It was a long time ago.

"It isn't too late, you know. It isn't too late to change the way things are." Just as suddenly as it had become confrontational, the voice in his head softened its tone. It startled him for a moment, and then he laughed, because it was so typical and more than a little bit silly. But it could also very well be true.

"You always believed that, didn't you?"

"You see, I have to believe that---because if I didn't---no, I do. I believe. . ."

It must have been a draft, or some psychic trick played by an errant mote of light, or the dust, or maybe he was, as he feared, slipping into madness, but for the briefest moment, he thought he felt himself kissed on the forehead.

"I miss you," he murmured. But it was like confessing to the bottom of a very deep well, and he was answered only by the distorted echo of his own voice.

Next Chapter: A Supposedly Fun Thing She Will Never Do Again

------

Notes:

This was originally intended to be the fourth chapter, but its content was so immediately apparent when I began writing this part of the project that the vignette nearly wrote itself. And because it takes longer than I anticipate to post new chapters ( I can't seem to get my effing life together), I thought I'd drop some pages on you---you know, give you a little bit more and let it marinate for a while, at least until I get better at getting it together. I am so sorry, Zelgadis fans, that my writing is morbidly obsessed with his misery. But I find most of it self-imposed (what, you didn't think it would all end perfectly with those two, did you?). I've always thought that this somehow made his character more romantic and is largely what has gotten him such devoted fandom. Oh, how we love our tragic heroes.

The story about the princess and the shadow was only half cribbed from _Choke_, by Chuck P. (_Fight Club_).

What I've laid out in this and the previous chapter leads to something---and this something will have to wait till the entire story is nearly finished. Anyway, it makes sense, in a way, that I get this and the last chapter out of the way so that I can get this weird Zelgadis/Amelia fascination out of my head so I can devote my pages to more challenging subjects (writing about those two, it seems, has become too easy). Rejoice, Lina Fans! In a few chapters she'll play a more central role. Or that's the plan, anyhow. We'll see if it plays out.

I like how the title of chapter two can describe either Amelia or Zelina, but it's really a play on an Elvis Costello song title.

On a tangential academic note, I kind of like writing about Zel and his daughter because it present two opposing interpretations of Foucault's theory of the body as a site of power. The older Zelina gets, the more she'll take that philosophy literally. I really like all of the characters I've made up. They have such formed personalities and they are fun because I can play around with your expectations of who these characters are. Valgaav also counts, since he was re-born and is essentially a blank slate. I'm sorry there's not much in the way of physical descriptions. Perhaps in another set of notes, I will describe what they all look like.

Anyway, the next chapter is told entirely from Tatiana's perspective, but the events recounted take place over a shorter interval of time, and the action is recounted in a very peripheral way. I am no good at writing (or perhaps it is more correct to say that I am disinclined to write) straight-forward action narratives. This is sad, because after re-reading the last fic I wrote, which was sort-of a hot-mess-but-people-seem-to-like-it-and-I-sort-of-still-like-it-because-it-has-its-moments kind of thing (I'm sure you all know what this feels like), I wanted to write something more in line with the _Slayers!_ universe---more of a funny-action-save-the-world kind of story at the same time it's only-a-fan-fic-which-means-I-really-just-want-to-write-about-two-characters-#$#$ing-each-other-for-mere-personal-gratification. Can one realistically do all of that? I love tangents, run-on sentences, and hyphenated-statements-as-single-concepts.

Oh, and it will be some time before I get around to posting anything more. See I just joined the Navy, because they wear cool hats and I need health insurance. But more is coming---I've planned the whole story out, and I think most of it is pretty cool---some parts I'm 90% certain are very cool and, uh, I feel quite urgently that they must be posted to be shared and receive angry fan-fiction reviews for having the audacity to exist. If that makes any sense. So until then, enjoy what is here, and write reviews and make suggestions, etc. Wish me luck!

Sincerely,

The Management


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